One of the most famous names to emerge from Ocean City didn't start from a crab shack. The Phillips family first made its mark 100 years ago as a seafood processing business on Hooper's Island in the Chesapeake Bay.

Phillips Seafood threw a centennial celebration Thursday at its iconic 20th Street restaurant to honor the founding of the A.E. Phillips seafood packing plant in 1914.

The company also released a 100th anniversary cookbook, showcasing original Phillips family recipes, from crab cakes and crab dip to oysters Rockefeller. Proceeds from the book will be donated to the Maryland Watermen's Association.

Company President and CEO Steve Phillips said his maternal grandfather was a waterman on Hooper's Island, and they would go crabbing and oystering together when he was a boy.

"I've always had a love for the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay," said Phillips, 67. "The Phillips family owes its success to Maryland watermen and the Chesapeake Bay. It's a way for us to give back to the watermen who are out there every day, working really hard, catching the seafood that the people in Maryland enjoy so much at our restaurants."

The donation from the cookbook "is like a godsend," said Robert T. Brown, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. "It's not only the contribution of the funds we're going to get from this, it's the research the Phillips family has done over years and years into crabs, to help improve the crabbing industry."

As the party got started, one family was enjoying a meal in the quiet before the dinner rush. Judy and Kenneth Wright, both 74, of Bedford, Pa., were joined by great-granddaughter Ali Turner, 10, with a pile of empty crab claws on the table.

Judy Wright said her family has been coming to Phillips to eat since the 1970s, and they make it a point to stop here for a meal whenever they visit the resort. On Thursday, it was Ali's second-ever time experiencing a Phillips dining experience.

"My great-granddaughter loves crab. We don't get them at home," she said. "It's always a treat to come here."

"That's how we started"

Steve's parents, Brice and Shirley Phillips, left Hooper's Island in 1956 to start their seafood business in Ocean City.

"After my father got back from the war, really, a small seafood processing business would not support two families," he said. "So they came to Ocean City and they founded a little 30-foot-by-30-foot carry-out shop, and that's how we started, right on 20th Street."

As the restaurant grew, room by room, the Phillips family actually lived on the top floor of the restaurant. After his parents moved into a home of their own, Steve Phillips stayed put and called the restaurant his home for almost 30 years, where he raised his own family.

"I had a sandbox up on the roof," he said, for his kids.

The restaurant today takes up an Ocean City block and seats 1,400 people. It's famous for its massive second-floor buffet that spans six dining rooms, as well as its girl-next-door waitresses in timeless red aprons.

The seafood house expanded in the 1980s into Baltimore and Washington, garnering new fame and followers. By the 1990s, with local seafood catches on the decline, Steve Phillips took the business overseas, and now supplies foreign-caught pasteurized crab meat to groceries across the U.S.

What's next for the family business? Steve Phillips said they're expanding their fast food concept in airports. They also just opened a new restaurant in Atlanta, and have plans to open another restaurant in Washington, D.C., at L'Enfant Plaza.

Some people may not even realize that the iconic Ocean City restaurant got its start as a seafood processing company, and not the other way around.

"That's how we started — processing crab meat, oysters, fish. We've always done that. Most of the restaurants get the attention," he said.

bshane@dmg.gannett.com

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Iconic resort company honors its 1914 founding as a seafood processing business